United Dreams Do Come True


Mom didn’t fully approve of my decision to get married. It wasn’t about my marrying Tom, but marrying too young. I understood her concerns. After all, we were just college juniors. We had no clue what the future held and we often acted like it.

Tom and I just told people we had united dreams. Everything would work out just fine, we said.


Sometimes when you jump into river rapids you learn survival skills. We did.


For instance, poverty.  We adjusted to being broke. Living in our car. And then moving into the back of Tom’s 1949 Ford Pickup which was roomy in comparison. We grew veggies on our friend’s land. 





Homeless? We didn’t think so, but by today’s standards one could argue we were modern pioneers in vehicle-homesteading.


Then failure. Believing firmly in our capacity to be farmers without any real experience was doomed from the beginning. It just took about five years and thousands of dollars to realize it. It took another ten years to pay everyone back. We learned how to fail and how to be responsible at the same time. Necessary lessons for our future.


The Biggest Change: If you want to practice selflessness, have children. Their needs come before your own. We both took parenting seriously. Our children shaped us as much as we could possibly ever shape them.




Over our years together, we’ve evolved from idealistic dreamers to accomplishing life goals.


As we mark another year together we’re not immune to life’s challenges. That’s another survival skill marriage offers—resilience. We also pray together—a lot. There’s so much beyond our control, but God has it.


United Dreams is our motto, but after this many decades, many of those dreams have already been lived out. Thankfully, we’re still dreaming new ones together.




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